The present invention relates to the art of quality maintenance. The invention finds particular application in the inspection and repair of tubular goods and will be described with particular reference thereto. It is to be appreciated, however, that the invention is also applicable to the inspection and processing of goods of various shapes and sizes including sheet goods, bars, spheres, irregular shaped parts, and the like.
Heretofore, tubular goods have been subject to tight quality control examination. Tubular goods such as oil well drilling pipe, nuclear reactor piping, and tubular goods used for other demanding applications have been inspected at the installation site. Commonly, a length of the tubular goods, e.g., a 50-foot length eight-inch steel pipe, was passed through an ultrasonic defect detection system. Defects in the tubular goods were noted and manually marked directly on the goods. Based on the inspection, the lengths were separated into acceptable, questionable, and rejected groups. The accepted lengths were installed in their normal, intended manner. When time permitted, surface cracks, such as stress risers, were manually removed. Due to their large length to diameter ratio, lengths with interior surface defects were usually scrapped.
One of the problems with the prior art inspection and repair systems was that an inventory of rejected goods was accumulated. At job sites where space is at a premium, e.g., off-shore drilling rigs and the like, maintenance of the inventory of rejected goods usurped valuable space. Another problem resided in the fact that the relatively high reject rate required a larger supply of uninspected goods to insure an adequate supply of acceptable goods. Further, the manual surface defect removal activities were time consuming and labor intensive. Frequently, a plurality of inspection and surface defect removal operations were required to locate, identify, and insure that all defects had been corrected.
The present invention contemplates a new and improved automated inspection as well as an automated repair system which overcomes the above-referenced problems and others while facilitating the ready availability of high quality tubular goods for installation.